After the red room
by SoCherryDarling
Summary: *After season 2 finale* Annie wakes up to find all she knew changed and only the strange silent boy seem's to know what she's seen. *collection of shorts to try and wrap up those pesky loose threads in my head!*
1. Chapter 1

She opened her eyes groggily to find him smiling down at her.

"Dale." She rasped, lifting a hand towards him.

"Don't talk, wait a moment."

He reached across to the pitcher of water on the bedside table and poured her a glass, holding it to her lips while she sipped gratefully.

"How are you Annie?"

"I've felt better." She manages a smile up at him. "Where am I?"

"You're in the hospital. Do you remember anything?"

Annie hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. "Dreams. Just fragments of dreams. Red curtains. Weird voices….. I don't know…"

Then she see's something.

Something in Dales eyes that makes her blood freeze in recognition.

But he doesn't notice.

She's always been good at hiding her feelings.

"Nothing." She reiterates, even though for a moment she thought Dales eye's went opaque, that his smile became overly wide, predatory.

Harry puts his head round the door and Annie thinks she's see's a flash of irritation cross Dale's face. But he's smiling, it's only his eyes that give him away to her.

"Coop, Hawk just called in. Seem's they found Leo Johnson."

Dale turned back to Annie and gently brushed her hair back from her face. She smiled hoping he didn't notice how she'd had to force herself not to recoil. "It seems I have to go. I'll be back Annie." He kissed her hand tenderly and she managed to smile weakly as he left.

She watched him leave and exhaled, hadn't realised she'd been holding her breath.

Shakily she stroked at the scars on her wrists, a reminder of a time …..

No.

Not now.

She'd always been perceptive. Too perceptive… Too _receptive_, that's what her mother had said. Too open to the world and all it's secrets.

_They'll burn you up_, she'd said.

And they had.

They'd put her in the hospital and then running away to the convent.

_That's not Dale._

The thought made her sick.

_It's not him._

She swung her legs off the bed and sat for a moment, gathering her thoughts.

She had to get out of here.

Had to tell someone.

But who?

The only person in Twin Peaks she could envisage herself explaining this too was Dale, and he was….. Changed.

In the back of her mind she thought she heard soft jazz, a saxophone maybe.

_Meanwhile._

_Meanwhile._

Someone walking past her room caught her eye.

A young man with a head dress on, flowers in his grasp. He stopped and turned towards her, frowning slightly, then, plucking a bloom from the bouquet, he stepped into her room and handed it to her.

"They're for Audrey. My sister." He said hesitantly.

Annie thought he sounded like he'd not spoken to anyone for a very long time, his words hesitant, as though he was rolling them around his mouth, not sure if he liked the taste f them.

"You've seen." He said quietly, then without another word he left her. The flower in her hand the only solid memento of him being here at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes Johnny felt lost.

Not in the Hotel.

No.

He knew every nook and cranny in that places, could close his eyes and navigate the halls and rooms with his eyes shut.

At least, when he was younger.

Now he only got lost in his head.

It was like driving into the town you grew up in to find all the streets turned around. You recognised the buildings, you knew the people, but it was all wrong.

No one knew he was gone yet.

He'd ran out of the Great Northern and found his way to the hospital, clear over the other side of town. The flowers he'd found in a garbage bin outside.

He'd taken the card and thrown that away, but with a little fluffing out, the flowers themselves looked fine.

_Meanwhile._

He stopped and cocked his head.

Tiny little sounds escaped his lips, like he was chanting or praying. Or maybe just repeating random syllables.

_Sick more, sick more, sick more_…. He muttered softly under his breath before hurrying on.

The girl on the bed…. The one with hair like a golden aura…. She knew.

She'd seen.

Unlike him though, she didn't remember.

Not many of them did.

Some blocked it it.

Major Briggs, he blocked it. Got it all mixed up with dreams but no! It's not dreams, the room, it's real, it's real as the floor under his feet.

The squeaking of his shoes on the linonium made him hesitate again.

It was like a switch in his head, tuned to varying frequencies, like a dog raising it's ears to the sound of a high pitched whistle. The dog doesn't always know what it means, but it knows it should pay attention.

_He's here. _

Johnny pressed himself against the tiled wall in terror as he saw him approach.

Saw him turn off onto another corridor before reaching him.

Was it too much to hope he hadn't seen him?

He closed his eyes and pushed his face into the slightly mouldy smelling blooms, humming to himself, lightly hitting the back of his head against the wall.

Something warm and feather like touched his hand.

_Don't be afraid._

He shook violently, the cellophane in his hands rattling.

_He can't touch you. You belong to the others._

He knew who was speaking, knew it was Laura, but he didn't want to look.

Didn't want to see her face

_Amen._

_Amen. _

Laura knew the truth.

But she belonged to the black now.

When she had visited, they had sat together, sometimes in the blanket forts she helped him build, sometimes under the great wooden table in his fathers office, she'd talk anywhere he felt safe. She was the only one he could form actual words with, make sentences. He'd talk to her about the red room and her mouth would turn down and her eye's would fill with tears as she stroked his hair and whispered,

_I know Johnny…. I know…._

He'd press his fingers against the tears on her cheeks and she didn't have to say a word.

He knew.

_Stop._

_Stop remembering._

He had to find Audrey.

* * *

The machines that beeped and sighed around her bed scared him, but he took a deep breath and went in anyway.

She looked so tiny.

His little sister was always larger than life, an element like fire or water, something that swept in for good or bad, not always noticing the devastation left in her path.

But now she was here, more bandage than skin, both arms in casts, a tube down her throat.

Johnny lay the flowers at the foot of the bed and leaned over to kiss the tiny patch of skin uncovered over her cheek.

"I saw him Audrey. I saw him again. When you wake up, you have to promise me. Don't let his mask fool you. He'll catch you. He'll eat you. You'll belong to the black and no one will come for you….."

"Johnny?"

He looked up in a panic to see Dr Jacobi standing in the doorway.

"Johnny? Son. What are you doing here?"

"Doctor!... Doctor Jac-Jac-Jacooo.b.b.b.b.b.b..."

The tremors started up in his legs, running up his body until his tongue was paralyzed and all he could do was sink to the floor, hooting louder and louder, the echos bouncing off the walls.


	3. Chapter 3

Audrey's dancing.

Swaying back and forth, like the languid melody is pulling strings connected to her hips, her arms.

She see's the giant watching her impassively, but doesn't find it odd that he's there.

He should be there.

His looming presence is almost comforting.

"You're tall." She sighs, closing her eyes as the music swells, passes through her, making her whole body shudder.

The giant says nothing.

"How did you even get in here?"

Where was she though…..?

She stops.

And now her brain registers the oddness of the situation.

The room, it's black and white floor seemingly stretching beyond her line of sight, the red curtains covering all four walls. If there even were walls behind them.

Frightened now, she notices shapes moving about on the other side. Tiny snatches of laughter, talking… something else.

Something almost inaudible, but she can feel it, feel the vibrations of it.

She reaches out a shaking hand to lift one of the curtains but the giant stops her.

"No."

Audrey brings her hands to her throat in alarm, her fists clenched till the knuckles turn white, her eyes wide, fearful.

"That is not for you." The giant say's, shaking his head a little. "Not yet."

"Who's back there?" She whispered as something cackling and hooting shot past, silhouetted against the material.

"The black ones. The ones who wish to pass back with you."

"I don't understand."

"It's not yet your purpose to understand."

Sudden pain shot through her body, a sensation of being lifted, the air leaving the room and then she's flung to the floor.

Heat, all around her, skin charring, bones breaking.

She opened her mouth to scream but nothing happened, she simply kicked her feet uselessly at the floor, trying to find purchase on the slippery wood.

"Don't trust him." The giant says sadly, watching her for a moment. "He's not who he was." And then turned, fading away.

* * *

"Easy Audrey, easy…. Nurse!"

Lights everywhere.

In her eye's, behind the masked figures, giving them halos.

"I'm just giving you something to calm you down sweetheart, steady now… here we go…"

He's talking to her like she's a frightened horse, and maybe she is… all she wants to do is run. Her heart pounds behind her ribs, insanely fast, her body shaking with adrenalin.

_Oh god it hurts!_

_It hurts so bad!_

"Ok… we're stabilizing….. Audrey…. Audrey honey can you hear me?"

She tries to talk but her mouth's full of thick sticky death.

"Sweetheart, I'm going to remove the ventilators tube now, it's not going to feel nice but we'll be done in just a moment.."

She gags and gasps as they pull it from her throat, tries to slap them away but her hands don't work.

The lights fading, the voices retreating and with it, the pain.

"She'll sleep now. Yeah… top her up in about 2 hours ok… And can someone call her parents?"

_Dale_

As everything fades again, he's the only one she can think to call out to.

_Special agent._

_Help me. _


End file.
